Super BonkReview

Share.

What would Dinosaur Week be without at least one caveman?

By Lucas M. Thomas

Dinosaurs are totally dominating. (Most of the time.) They're frighteningly fearsome. (Almost always.) They're incredibly intimidating, brutish beasts that no one would dare to mess with. (Except one.) And that exception is a bald guy.

Bonk the Caveman burst onto the gaming scene over two decades ago now, and he's been beating up the biggest, baddest dinos ever since -- sending them screaming back into their Jurassic parks with their too-short arms trying desperately to wipe the tears from their eyes. He's the one major mascot who's always been able to reliably put those terrible lizards right back in their place. And, in a bit of convenient timing for our Dinosaur Week here at IGN, another of his classic adventures has just recently arrived for the Wii's Virtual Console.

Super Bonk is the game this time around. Bonk was mostly known as Hudson's mascot for the TurboGrafx-16 platform, where he headlined three different platformers that have each previously been re-released through the Wii. Super Bonk, though, was the game that came around after the Turbo hardware had failed. And, admitting defeat, Hudson moved him to the Super Nintendo.

It must have been a moment of broken pride for the developers, seeing their mascot join their rival's roster. But they weren't alone. Because Bonk himself was doing the same thing in-game.

After years of flipping through the air, climbing up sheer walls with his jagged teeth and headbutting every dinosaur he saw, Bonk himself must have admitted defeat as well -- because Super Bonk saw him cross the line and become one of his own foes. He became a dinosaur. The proud, Cro-Magnon man lost his humanity and transformed his body into something grotesque and reptilian.

It's part of the Super Bonk gameplay. Bonk's adventures had always featured him altering his form after consuming power-up items strewn throughout nearly every level, usually de-evolving himself into more powerful, even invincible human species ancestors. But Super Bonk goes bonkers with that idea. Here, Bonk can both transform his body by eating bits of meat and alter his size by consuming pieces of candy.

The dinosaur version of Bonk comes around if you manage to combine two meats with one piece of growth-inducing blue candy -- he transforms into a wild, off-putting chameleon-tongued Godzilla creature with a warped expression on his face. Gameplaywise, then, it's even weirder -- the Dinosaur Bonk can swipe his massive tail around to assault his enemies, or spend half his collected Smily tokens to turn invisible.

Invisible? Some dinosaurs were experts at stealth, no question. But none of them ever had full-on optical camo.

So it's hard to get on board with the direction Hudson's designers went with Bonk's transformations this time around, stylistically. But even if you allow for the odd visuals and forgive them on the grounds of this franchise just being a bit insane to begin with, there's a better justification for my complaint. These forms just aren't fun.

The transformations are the heart of Super Bonk's gameplay design, and yet none of them really feel necessary or enhancing to the platforming experience. They all just feel tossed in here in a jumble. None of the levels feel like they were crafted to require one specific type of power-up or ability. You get nothing out of accessing them beyond a brief power trip.

It's a mess of wasted ideas. There's a bird form of Bonk that can turn enemies to stone, but it's used to no real purpose. The long tongue he gains in the chameleon-inspired form gives him no eating mechanic or anything else creative, it just knocks out foes the same as his normal headbutts. One tiny form of Bonk, accessed if you shrink him down to size with diminishing red candy after eating two bits of meat, can spontaneously generate its own moving platforms -- a wonderful concept to explore in the platforming genre. It too, though, feels unexplored and underutilized. Thrown in with all the rest in one big, incohesive mess.

What's worse, the rest of Super Bonk also deviates away from what made his other games great -- especially in its failed attempt to string together its levels in a non-linear, Metroid-like fashion. The way to move forward is never clear and there's no map to help you. Bonk was better off when he just moved from left to right and left it at that.

This link directs to a retail affiliate. IGN may receive a commission from your purchase.

The Verdict

I blame the dinosaurs. Bonk was at his best back on the TurboGrafx-16, bashing those prehistoric dragons into early extinction with the crushing force of his cranium. As soon as he left that hardware behind and came to the Super, he lost his way. He became mutated, twisted. A disturbing half-dino hybrid. That's not Bonk. Not really.

So celebrate this Dinosaur Week by ignoring this latest VC re-release and, instead, going back to check out the original Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge or Bonk 3. All three are still on sale in the Wii Shop, all three are priced cheaper than Super Bonk, and all three are a better representation of the franchise -- because they keep Bonk as a caveman, and dinosaurs as the separate, sometimes teary-eyed recipients of his rage.